PressBox: Terps, Cavs Overcome Adversity To Reach Title Game

Terps, Cavs Overcome Adversity To Reach Title Game

By Barrett Neale

When the field for the NCAA men's lacrosse tournament was chosen on May 8, few would have correctly predicted the championship matchup.

Seventh-seeded Virginia (12-5) and unseeded Maryland (13-4) are the last two teams standing, and they will face off at 3:30 p.m. Monday at M&T Bank Stadium. After their semifinal wins, both teams' coaches talked about getting to this point by overcoming adversity throughout the season.

For these two programs this season, adversity means more than losing a game or getting injured. Last May, Virginia women's lacrosse player Yeardley Love was found dead in her apartment, and men's lacrosse player George Huguely was arrested on first-degree murder charges. Six weeks ago, Maryland senior attackman Ryan Young's mother, Maria, passed away after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

"Ryan would go home after games and leave on Friday or Saturday and come back on maybe Tuesday or Wednesday," Maryland coach John Tillman said. "We felt like Ryan needed to be there to support his family and we would adjust, but he's the quarterback of our offense. When he doesn't show up, it limits what you do, but we wouldn't have done it any other way. He needed to be where he needed to be because that was more important than lacrosse ever would be."

The chosen color to raise awareness for pancreatic cancer is purple, and the Terrapins have been wearing purple shirts during warm-ups in addition to donning purple ribbons and purple stickers with the initials MY on their helmets. Tillman has been wearing purple shirts on the sidelines, and did so again during the semifinals.

"I think what happened is everybody else stepped up their play to make it easier for Ryan, and that adversity really brought us together," Tillman said. "I think hearing Maria Young's story inspired everyone to work that much harder. To go through three years of chemo and radiation and fight the fight for her three boys and make sure they graduated, you can't not be inspired."

Ryan's twin brother Kevin, is a senior midfielder at Duke, where their brother Michael played lacrosse from 2005-2008. Both Maria and Michael attended the Maryland-Duke regular-season game in Durham, N.C., which Duke won. But she did not live to see the Terrapins, growing closer in the face of tragedy, beat the Blue Devils during the Atlantic Coast Conference championship and the NCAA semifinals.

"You have to practice hard," Tillman said. "You can't ever complain, because the courage that she showed, shame on you for having a bad day. This is just a game. You've got to sell out for each other. To see the kids rally for Ryan and the families in our program rally for Ryan, this community, our alums, it's been unbelievable, and I'm so proud just to be part of this."

Meanwhile, another ACC school was thrust into the national spotlight. The Love case revealed that Huguely was intoxicated the night she died and was one of six players on Virginia's roster who had been convicted of or pleaded guilty to alcohol-related charges. An additional two were charged, but found not guilty.

"I feel like the real world has stuck its face into our little fantasyland over some period of time," Virginia coach Dom Starsia said, "but we've been surrounded by a lot of support here, both family and friends and staff people here at U.Va. and we've kind of gotten through it as best we can."

This season, the Cavaliers' coaches imposed a stricter set of rules for the team and stuck to them, dismissing senior midfielder Shamel Bratton and indefinitely suspending his twin, Rhamel, for failing to adhere to those standards. Rhamel has yet to be reinstated.

"As we were sorting through this, I didn't notice any change in the demeanor of the team," Starsia said. "These kinds of things are a challenge and this group, I didn't think we missed a beat on the practice field. We just talked about what were going to need to do."

There are players who have bought in to the team's new philosophy, including senior defender Bray Malphrus. Malphrus talked after the team's semifinal win against Denver about the changes the team had had to make because of losing the Brattons in addition to its injured players.

"We've kind of taken a complete 180 since the beginning of the season," Malphrus said. "I can't speak high enough about the 40 kids on our team who've done a great job of being coachable. They've bought into all the schemes that the coaches have implemented."

Both Malphrus and Starsia said the players and coaches had had confidence in the team's ability to make these changes and still be successful. Their hard work paid off and the team will play on Memorial Day for the first time since 2006 after a 2007 first-round loss and three-straight semifinal losses from 2008 to 2010.

"Obviously two weeks ago, there's not a lot of folks who thought we'd be sitting here today having this conversation," Starsia said. "But I think the guys in the locker room, they never stopped believing."

The Terrapins have had their fair share of early postseason exits. They also lost during the 2007 first round and from 2008 to 2010, they were eliminated during the quarterfinals. Now, they get the chance to give the school its first national championship since 1975.

"Regardless of whether we won this weekend or what happened," Tillman said, "to be part of something bigger than yourself and to be around so many great people, it's pretty humbling. I'm pumped for our guys because they have looked out for each other. They have made a lot of sacrifices."

Posted May 29, 2011